Don’t get caught off guard by market crashes that can take all your money down with them. And don’t miss out on markets where you can build wealth practically overnight. Real Estate News for Investors with Kathy Fettke is the premiere source for savvy real estate investors who want the edge. Stay up-to-date on new laws, regulations, and economic events that affect real estate. Topics include: market trends, economic analysis that affects housing prices, updates on the best rental markets for investing in single-family rentals or multi-unit rentals, turn-key housing standards, the fate of the highly revered 1031 exchange and other tax law affecting investors, self-directed IRA investing and 401k changes, where rents and property values are rising or falling, flipping risks, new Dodd-Frank rules regarding private lending and financing standards, areas with job losses vs job growth, areas that are overbuilt or over-supplied versus areas with low supply and high demand, and how to avoid real estate scams. We'll bring you the latest reports from organizations like the National Association of Realtors, Realty Trac, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Rent Range, Property Radar, the Norris Group, Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Suse Orman, Bigger Pockets, Dave Ramsey and more. And we'll help you interpret the data in terms that make sense for your real estate goals, and portfolio. Grow and protect your wealth by staying on the forefront of economic data analysis, expert opinions, innovative investing strategies and profitable investment opportunities. We'll share all the top real estate news stories and the best trade secrets investors should know, so you can stay ahead of the curve and make fully informed real estate decisions. Host Kathy Fettke is Co-CEO of the Real Wealth Network, author of Retire Rich with Rentals and host of the Real Wealth Show on iTunes. She brings decades of media and real estate investing experience, offers her own viewpoints on particular topics, and taps into her network of real estate experts for real world news updates created just for investors like you. Get the real news on real estate on The Real Estate News For Investors Show!

Another one million previously underwater homes are now above the water line. ATTOM Data Solutions released its 2016 Year End Home Equity and Underwater Report that shows just 5.4 million properties are still seriously underwater.

While 5.4 million properties still underwater sounds like a large number, it's a big improvement from the first quarter of 2012 when ATTOM first began tracking. At that time, there were 12.5 million properties considered "seriously underwater".

A property is seriously underwater when the loan amount is 25% higher than the market value of the home. The 5.4 million homes that are underwater right now represent 9.6 percent of all U.S. properties with a mortgage.

Federal regulators are slapping a California-based lender with a $3.5 million dollar fine for what they call an illegal kickback scheme. They also ordered two brokers and a mortgage servicing company to pay almost a half million dollars in fines for accepting those kickbacks in exchange for illegal referrals.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says Prospect Mortgage used a variety of methods to pay brokers for referrals from 2011 through 2016. It appears the primary method involved Marketing Service Agreements.

Those are supposed to be used to pay for advertising or promotional services. But, the CFPB says the MSAs were used to hide customer referral payments. It says Prospect would track the number of referrals by an individual broker and then adjust the amount of money it would pay that broker for marketing services. A Keller Williams broker out of Corvallis, Oregon was fined $180,000 for accepting these kinds of payments.

A new real estate sales model appears to be suddenly mushrooming into existence. There are now at least three start-ups that will buy homes from people who want to sell immediately, including newcomer Knock.

Knock, OfferPad and Opendoor are trying to eliminate the home sale hassle by serving as a quick turn-around sales agent for homeowners. They are promising a painless click-and-sell process. The homeowner requests a quote and the websites respond with an offer, within hours.

If the offer is accepted, OfferPad and Opendoor will buy the homes outright. Knock is a little different. It will offer to sell the home within six weeks "for" you. If the home doesn't sell within that time, Knock will then buy that home from the seller.

President Trump is in the process of selecting a number of government leaders for important positions in his new administration. The Federal Trade Commission alone currently has three empty seats to fill. How might Trump’s picks for those positions affect us real estate investors?

Tech-giants Google and Amazon could be rather heavily affected by President Trump’s selection of a chairperson for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Shortly after his inauguration, the president replaced former FTC chairwomen Edith Ramirez with Maureen Ohlhausen, one of two remaining members of the five-person FTC commission and the only remaining Republican.

At that time, incidentally, the Washington Post speculated that Ohlhausen had some knowledge that she might ultimately be Trump’s pick for the permanent position, citing a public statement that she made shortly after her selection about her commitment to a “free, honest, and competitive marketplace.”

This may be the year that billions of dollars in commercial mortgages go belly up. These loans were financed in 2007 and are maturing this year. That means some commercial property owners will be faced with huge balloon payments and for some, a major headache to pay them off.

The Federal Reserve stated in its semiannual Monetary Policy Report to Congress on Tuesday that commercial property prices were becoming a "growing concern.”

Specifically, the report said, “"Commercial real estate (CRE) valuations, which have been an area of growing concern over the past year, rose further, with property prices continuing to climb and capitalization rates decreasing to historically low levels,"

While commercial property debt remains small compared to the overall economy the report said that the rising "valuation pressures may leave some smaller banks vulnerable to a sizable CRE price decline."

Detroit has flipped the switch on a plan to light up the streets at night. And the effort to breath new life into the city is attracting the attention of investors who see bargain basement prices and a whole lot of potential.

The once-bankrupt city just completed a four-year project to replace "all" the city's streetlights. 88,000 mostly broken down old sodium lights were replaced with 65,000 brighter energy-efficient LED lights across the city.

The street light replacement project was part of the city's bankruptcy exit plan. The judge allowed the city to eliminate $7 billion dollars in debt. In return, the city agreed to invest $1.7 billion into improvements. The new lights were part of those improvements.

Everyone seems to have a list of best markets for investing in real estate today, including Forbes. They recently came out with their Top 20 List - and not surprisingly, many of the cities were the same as Real Wealth Network’s list.

Forbes dug into the numbers with the help of a North Carolina-based company that tracks housing markets. It says Local Market Monitor used data from 300 markets, to come up with the best places to invest this year.

Many cities on this list are good for both rental investing and a place to call home. The states with the most hot spots are Texas and Florida but there are three cities in California, and one in the Northeast that may surprise you.

Another swipe of the pen by President Trump will delay - indefinitely - a new rule that was intended to protect consumers from bad financial advice.

President Trump signed a "Memorandum on the Fiduciary Duty Rule" the same day he signed an executive order to re-examine Dodd-Frank regulations. This rule would require that financial advisers make recommendations based on their client's best interest, instead of their own.

"The Fiduciary Rule" was written to force financial advisers to act more like fiduciaries, rather than greedy salespeople looking for the highest commission. But some experts say the industry was already moving toward a fiduciary standard with or without that rule - or its suspension.

President Trump is making good on another campaign promise with the signing of yet another executive order. This one is called “Core Principles for Regulating the United States Financial System” and appears to be setting the wheels in motion to unravel the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Friday’s executive order doesn't actually mention the words "Dodd-Frank." It simply directs government agencies to look at existing regulations to determine if they comply with the Core Principles listed in the Executive Order, and then report back to the President within 120 days.

Flint, Michigan, is not alone when it comes to problems with old water systems. Cities across the nation are faced with aging pipes and a lack of funding to fix them.

The water issue has gotten a lot of press lately because of the Flint lead contamination crisis. In an effort to save money, the city had stopped getting its water from Lake Huron and the Detroit water system, and began pumping it from the Flint River.

Unfortunately for many people who drank the water, the river water was not treated properly to prevent the leaching of lead from old pipes. As a result, thousands of children and adults were exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead. The city has switched back to the Lake Huron water and is currently working on a pipeline upgrade.

And Flint isn't the only city with old pipes. The Brookings Institute issued a new policy brief on the nation's aging water infrastructure. It estimates that more than $1 trillion in upgrades are needed across some 52,000 public water systems and 700,000 miles of pipes.

When you see mind-boggling home prices in places like San Francisco and New York, it's often not the "home" that's driving those prices higher. Those high prices represent the value of the land. The home is just window-dressing, and basically, disposable.

It might shock you to see a fire-damaged home, with charred holes through the floor and walls, selling for one million dollars. It's no doubt a "fixer upper" or even a “tear-down” so at that price, it seems almost absurd that anyone would buy it… unless you are in a city where the land is worth more than the homes.

Realtor.com came up with a list of 10 cities where the land is more valuable than the corresponding homes, and San Francisco was at the top of that list. The data came from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the Metropolitan American Housing Survey.